Chapter 44
Teddy was both gobsmacked and overjoyed to see Sabrina walk into his restaurant on Sunday.
“This place won’t clean itself,” she said, snapping on her rubber gloves, but she wasn’t there because she had a compulsion
to clean. She knew change was on the horizon and it scared her stupid, and she would rather be busy than sitting “resting.”
She didn’t want to rest, she didn’t want to think, she wanted to do . More memories had popped into her mind, their flow increasing since she’d met the scarecrow man. She now remembered that
she’d had a large executive desk in an office before it was removed and replaced by one of the ordinary gray ones. She remembered
playing some sort of tennis game over the divide with the young woman she sat next to at work, who had dark curly hair and
eyes full of mischief. There was a young man somewhere in her life who brought the same sort of warm wave with him, her partner’s
son, she thought—not her husband’s; she knew she wasn’t married. And she could see herself loading many, many shoes into bags
and feeling an all-consuming rush of anger as she did so. So many small memories with no weight attached had sharpened to
full HD color, yet too many big, important ones remained shadowy. The man she had left either temporarily or permanently,
for instance; he was there in her head without distinction or definition, and she wasn’t sure if she was blocking him unconsciously
or deliberately.
Teddy was humming absently as he was food-prepping in the kitchen.
He sounded content, without a clue of what was about to fall on him.
He didn’t know that the previous day Cilla had dropped an A-bomb on his mother’s life, how much she’d cried on Sabrina’s shoulder that the happy last years she’d spent back in England with Sal had turned out to be a lie, the biggest deception her husband had ever performed.
Sylvie was up at the house with her at the moment, talking it through as friends do, helping her to put it in order in her head so she could tell her son that Flick was his half sister, because he had every right to know.
God knows how Flick would take it. The onus had been unfairly put on Marielle to make the call whether to share or keep the secret, but once known, it was too big to fit back in the box.
Sabrina wondered if it ever would have come to light had she not been there.
She didn’t want to be the catalyst for something as cruel as that.
Why, after giving out so much kindness, did Marielle have to be the one to get kicked in the teeth?
At half past twelve Teddy bobbed his head into the ladies’ loo and said, “I’ve made lunch.” And she walked out to find that
one of the tables for two had been set for them, rather than the big table where they usually ate. Cannelloni, breads, butter.
Simple, thoughtful; she could tell he’d set everything precisely, had arranged the food on the plate the same way, with care.
“Your mum has put a notice about me in tomorrow’s paper,” said Sabrina to him as he handed over the dish of freshly grated
Parmesan. “I don’t exactly have a lot of details to give out, but it’s a start.”
He nodded slowly. “And if no one responds, what will you do then?”
“The police, I suppose. I don’t know what made me initially think I might be in danger, but I’m ninety-nine point nine percent
sure I’m not.”
“Maybe it was your mind forcing you to take time out from whatever it was you left,” said Teddy.
“They’re odd, aren’t they, minds?” said Sabrina. “Hiding things, distorting facts, telling you lies.”
“It sounds to me as if you’ve maybe had a lot in your life that you never really worked through, Sabrina.
Your mother, your aunt and uncle, your baby.
They might have been a long time ago, but if you never had help to heal, they’ve just sat inside you like unexploded bombs and. .. they eventually went off.”
What he said made sense. Maybe she needed to go back so much further than what had happened to her in the past two months,
disassemble herself, restructure, like some of the companies she’d helped along the way. She remembered a sports shop on the
brink of collapse. She’d had to strip it down to its basics, excise the rot rather than patch it up, pretending it wasn’t
there like they’d done in the past, only to fail. But they’d succeeded when they’d rebuilt from the ground up.
From the ground up. Why did those four words make her think of happy Monday evenings spent with like-minded people in a fusty church hall?
“You don’t have to go back,” said Teddy. “You’re welcome to stay as long as you like... want... need to.”
“Thank you.” She smiled. She felt that, but she had to find out everything about herself. She needed to be the full finished
jigsaw with the picture complete.
Teddy dropped his fork. “I’m putting this all wrong. Of course you have to go back. You have family, possessions, money, friends,
your job to reconnect with. But you don’t have to stay there if you find you aren’t the right shape for that life anymore,
Sabrina, because...” He couldn’t say it: You are the right shape for us. For me. It wasn’t fair to put that pressure on her. How could she tell what she wanted until she was back where she belonged and
in a more informed position to choose? “You know what I mean,” he said instead.
“I do,” she said. She half felt as if she were on holiday, and the thought of going home brought with it the sort of depression that comes with the prospect of returning to a mundane, lesser existence. But people did go home, and they settled back in their places, because that’s what life was like.
That’s why people loved Shirley Valentine so much, because Shirley lived the dream, but it was just a fantasy, a story.
“Your mum asked if you’d call in on your way home,” said Sabrina then, careful to sound as matter-of-fact as possible, as
Marielle had asked her to.
“What for, did she say?”
“Nope, she just asked me to pass on the message.”
This lovely man had secrets ready to jump out at him from behind a corner too, and she so wished he didn’t.
“Of course,” he said, breaking into some bread. Would this be the last Sunday they spent together like this? Her being here
had awakened him inside, and he wondered if that had been fate’s purpose in bringing her into his life. That and giving him
some great advice on the best way for his business to survive when Ciaoissimo opened. Maybe that was all he was meant to have
of her, just a small but precious and transient gift.
“This is delicious,” said Sabrina, eating the last of the cannelloni.
“I know,” said Teddy, “because I made it.”
He smiled, a deep curve that made something inside her warm, and she wondered if she had been led here to realize that she
should be cared for, that she was worth a man’s consideration, and that, if she didn’t make someone smile like that, they
weren’t the one for her. She knew, without a doubt, that if Teddy Bonetti had been in the other life she had left, her brain
wouldn’t have been able to forget him.
When Sabrina left the restaurant after her shift, she turned down the lift home with Teddy, saying she wanted to take a walk, but instead of going down to the beach, she headed up the hill to the estate where Cilla lived.
She didn’t know the address, but she had picked up from Flick that her mother had one of the largest houses and a pretentious porch with sturdy Greek pillars, lording it above all the others. It wasn’t hard to find.
Sabrina walked up the drive, past the showy BMW parked there. She hadn’t been told what car Cilla owned, but strangely she
had guessed that was what she’d have. She rang the bell and waited. Eventually a clipped voice came through the doorbell speaker.
“What do you want?”
“Can I talk to you, Cilla?” replied Sabrina.
“I have nothing to say to you.”
“I’ll take up five minutes of your time only, but it will be the most important conversation you’ll ever have in your life,”
said Sabrina. She was prepared to wait here for as long as it took to wear Cilla down into speaking to her. If her presence
here was in any way responsible for all this upset, she would do her best to limit some of the damage before she left.
Surprisingly, she didn’t have to lay siege to Cilla’s house, because the door opened and Cilla appeared. She was fully made
up, but the thick layer of foundation couldn’t disguise her swollen eyes with the puffy bags underneath. She moved aside so
that Sabrina could come in, but it was clear that whatever Sabrina had to say to her had to be done standing up in the hallway.
“Well?” she asked.
“I’m here to talk about Flick,” said Sabrina.
Cilla dropped a disbelieving laugh. “How is she any of your business?”
“You’re right, she isn’t, but I’ve really come to care about her. You are so lucky, Cilla. She’s a gorgeous girl—bright, ambitious—”
Cilla cut her off. “I know what she is because she’s my daughter. My daughter. Do you have a daughter?”
“No, but—”
“Then why are you about to tell me how to treat mine, because I can smell that’s what you’re itching to do and I’m not—”
“My daughter died, Cilla.” Sabrina’s turn to do the cutting off. Cilla’s mouth snapped shut, and when she opened it again to speak, her voice had dropped considerably in volume.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, her tone still stiff, still not conceding anything.
“I imagined my daughter would turn out just like Flick. Confident and ready to take on the world.” Sabrina smiled, thinking
of her beautiful dark-haired Linnet working her way around Australia. She had felt so real, so vital , but she was just a figment of a desperately sad imagination that couldn’t let her go. “My own mother put everything before
me—men, booze, money—and eventually it killed any affection I had for her, because there’s no automatic right to love, Cilla,
just because you’re related to someone. I know my memory is a little skew-whiff at the moment, but when I think of my mother,
there is no doubt in my mind that her place was taken by the aunt who was going to adopt me, and I feel nothing for the woman
who gave birth to me other than resentment and disappointment and sadness. I’m here as a cautionary tale, Cilla. You are losing
Flick; eventually the love she has for you will erode past the point of no return. I would give anything to have a relationship
with a daughter. I’m beyond jealous of what you have, and I can’t stand by and see you throwing it away.”
“I love my daughter,” said Cilla through clenched teeth.
“Then show her. Respect her as the grown woman she is, be there for her, tell her you’re proud of her, tell her you love her,
because all she gets from you are petty criticisms and put-downs, and she sees how much more important men and money are in
your life than she is, and trust me, I can tell you how deeply that wounds. You’ve caused a lot of damage, Cilla, and you
are going to end up miserable and alone if you don’t put this right. This might well be your last chance to save your relationship
with your daughter; don’t throw it away.”
“Well, thank you for the lecture,” said Cilla after a few seconds of silence. But it was bravado, because Sabrina knew that she’d listened, and that was all she wanted, for Cilla to see what she had to lose. She could do no more. She turned, opened the door, and left.
Sabrina called in at a café on the way home so that Marielle and Teddy had time alone without her arrival interrupting anything.
He’d gone by the time she reached the flat. She knocked softly on the adjoining door to check up on Marielle, who invited
her through. She looked stronger than Sabrina had expected to find her.
“How did he take it?” asked Sabrina, putting on the kettle.
“I don’t think he knew what to think. He was upset for me, he was angry at his father, I had to make him promise not to storm
over to Cilla’s house because I know my boy, and though he has a lot more control over himself than his father obviously had,
he has a very pronounced sense of right and wrong. And he’s worried about how Flick will take it because she’ll have to know.”
Marielle pressed on her temples with her fingertips. “What a mess. Halfway through telling him, Sabrina, I wondered if I was
doing the right thing. Did he even need to know? I could have saved him the pain just by keeping it to myself. We should have
done a paternity test first. Bev’s daughter works in a lab and she says if we do one, she’ll fast-track the results.”
Marielle was getting herself properly wound up. Sabrina abandoned any tea-making to sit with her.
“None of this is your fault, Marielle. Yes, you did the right thing. You shouldn’t have to carry all this alone.”
“Cilla’s husband was pale and fair and slight. I could never understand how two people like them could have produced Flick.
She was the tallest girl in her class, the darkest skinned. Cilla used to say she was a throwback, but it crossed my mind
more than once about her and Sal because he did like a pretty blonde, and I felt guilty that it had, can you believe?” She
laughed and a few tears escaped from her eyes at the same time.
There was a knock at the front door and they heard someone come in straight after.
“I bet that’s Teddy,” said Marielle. “He went off to clear his head. I knew he’d be back.”
But it wasn’t. The lounge door opened and in walked Cilla.